


It Came From the Vents

by KogoDogo



Series: The Thing in the Vents [1]
Category: Half Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware, Half Life VR But The AI Is Self-Aware
Genre: Black Mesa Sweet Voice, Body Horror, Gen, Horror, Monster - Freeform, Only it ain't so sweet, THE SONG OF DEATH
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:29:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24178177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KogoDogo/pseuds/KogoDogo
Summary: I feel there's not enough emphasis on how otherworldly Benrey is supposed to be, so let's just crank it up to eleven, alright?
Series: The Thing in the Vents [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1791718
Comments: 48
Kudos: 630





	It Came From the Vents

He’d been there for a while, crawling around in the ceiling, watching old men wander around with coffee and microwave dinners. They talked about things he didn’t understand but somehow knew weren’t as important or concrete as they claimed, and they argued about stuff that seemed boring and trivial. They used big words for concepts he intrinsically understood in an effort to sound smart when, in all honesty, reality was very basic and pointless and pretty dumb. It was funny in a way, watching caffeine-fueled grandpas trying to do things he’d been doing since, well, _forever_.

Literal forever. Dawn of time forever. He wasn’t sure what he was, he just knew he always had been.

Sometimes, when everyone went home, he’d slither down from the ceiling to poke around at their contraptions and see what the fuss was about. Blinking lights, buttons that made horrible sounds when you pressed them, liquids that ranged between sweet and delicious to bitter and corrosive. Once, he found crystals that buzzed when he touched them and made half of his eyes go blind for a day. He tried to bite it in half as an act of revenge. It took three full sheds for the fang to grow back.

The most interesting thing about the complex, though, wasn’t any of the machines or liquids or blinding energy-rocks. It sure as fuck wasn’t the air ducts which, honestly, he was pretty sure he had memorized about as well as anything he’d ever memorized in his life, ultimately coming to the conclusion that there were way too fucking many and science had gone too far. Like, seriously, the complex was big but it was kind of excessive.

No. The most interesting thing was the youngling.

Well, it was young in comparison to everyone else, at least. Scruffy, bedraggled, bespectacled… endearing?He wasn’t sure a way to describe the thing, save that it stood out like a sore thumb among the other fleshbags and that was appealing to him. Appealing enough that, for weeks, he’d been skulking around above its office and its locker and its path from the tram to its department. Once, the stupid animal had made a stupid joke that made him screech until he puked purple, which ended up with a maintenance team being called and him having to eat the repairman.

Whatever. It happens. It wasn’t the first person he’d eaten and it wouldn’t be the last.

The obsession had been mounting for weeks, though, and anymore it was growing to be unbearable. He was primal, primordial, driven by instinct, and he didn’t much like having to show restraint. He’d never had to in the past--compared to these fleshbags, he was basically a god--but there was something new, exciting, and awful roiling around in his guts. It almost felt like shame, or maybe a mild and annoying counterpart to fear. Sure, he knew he could have just snatched the young-ish one and taken off with him at any time, but what would it think if he did that?

Why did he care what it thought?

He had to figure out why he cared what it thought.

There were still a few hours left before it arrived, assuming he had timed it correctly, having learned it’s schedule from all the stalking. By extension, he’d also memorized the schedule of one human named “Barney” or “Ben” or “Henry” or _something_ who’d always beat the young one to work without fail. This one wasn’t as appealing, being too angular and sinewy and odd, but it was conveniently placed for what he had in mind. 

Slithering through the vents, he trailed it. Its strangely domed head shone in the white lights of the hallway, a beacon made of plexiglass and blue. Its voice chimed through the vacant hallways as it bid pointless greetings to withering mortals who answered with the same lack of interest. They all seemed so cheerful, but their words were hollow in color. Around curves and bends, he followed, eyes blinking away dust that indicated that the repairman he’d eaten hadn’t changed the filters before his death. Viscous drool seeped from the corners of his mouth, vivid and glowing.

After what seemed like an eternity, he finally found it alone. The husk-like old men and fellow dome-heads had vanished into the mythical “break room” to do whatever it was they did in the morning. BarneyBenHenry sighed contentedly upon the realization that he was done with his social interaction for the day. Skeletal fingers curled around the edge of the vent covering above it, claws gently prying away the steel grate. Personally, he wondered how it would feel if it knew it’d never have to interact with anyone again.

Relieved? He bet it would be relieved.

Dripping and glimmering, he oozed out, long limbs stretching out and bent, gnarled body uncurling like a serpent. His eyes, all of them, rolled towards BenBarnRy, blinking in unison as they struggled to see in the bright light. For a moment, he was afraid he’d slip and fall, tendrils whipping from his inky back to give him support, curling around everything from pipes to light fixtures. This was the sound that caught HenBenBar’s attention: not the heaving, the panting, the growling, the colorful trill of excitement, but the sound of an overhead light creaking.

Humans were fucking stupid.

Its head tilted back and his visage rotated to face the human right-side up. Its eyes went wide and dark, and its weird mouth opened up to scream. Realizing he didn’t have much time to work, he lashed out, long and slimy fingers cramming down the thing’s throat as he curled his second hand into the collar of its shirt. Like a flash, he was up, the rainbow of excitement he’d spewed fading in the air as if it had never been.

Of course, it thrashed and struggled. It kicked and made a scene. The others would think it was a mechanical problem, some rotor knocking around, and that was perfectly fine. By the time they’d send another repairman, he’d be gone and it’d be dead.

A third and fourth hand tore free from his body, splattering his prey with an inky mess of black. Carefully, gently, he clasped its head in his hands, claws sinking ever-so-gently into its skin. Not enough to draw blood, but enough to let it know he meant business. Enough to hold it still so it had no choice but to look him in the eyes.

“Mmmph mph mph!” it said. He had no idea what that meant. He cooed in response, a single orb of teal hovering between their faces. It kicked again. He needed more hands to hold it down.

“Mmph mph mck mumph mph!”

“Yeah, ‘mmph mmph bbb’ to you, too,” he responded at long last. Apparently this was not the greeting it wanted or expected. Figured.

“Mmph!”

“Uh, sure. Can you stop moving? You’re making this really hard.”

“Nmph-umph!”

It kicked him. More hands were necessary. He was going to be made of fucking arms before this was over with.

“I just need… I just need your, uh, your memories and stuff. And your face. That’s cool, right?”

He wasn’t sure if this was the vernacular every human used, and he wasn’t sure if that was the right syntax, but it seemed to understand. Or it choked. Either way, it fell limp and started leaking out of its eyes, making a pitiful sound that the repairman he devoured made not long before. He wasn’t sure what that meant, either.

“Okay. So. Yeah. Just hold on.”

Inhaling deeply, he locked eyes with the fleshbag. Then, all the air came out in a scream. He’d learned a long time ago that there were pitches the humans couldn’t hear and colors they couldn’t see, things that their little brains just couldn’t process. Metal shook, dust whorled, brilliant hues flooded the darkness and danced through the duct. It was beautiful, honestly, and just distracting enough to take his mind off of the horrible, horrible burning sensation traveling up all of his arms.

Emaciated, spidery limbs twisted and contorted, becoming fuller and fewer. Blackened, tar-like flesh smoothed and grew paler. He felt most of his eyes receding back into his body, his claws retracting back into his fingers, his teeth shifting in his ever-morphing mouth. Layers built upon layers, blue and black, hard and soft, and with them came the knowledge of what it all was: a helmet, a kevlar vest, a uniform, a standard-issue pistol. In fact, his brain sparked with new memories and thoughts and realizations and cluttered bits of absolute bullshit that didn’t all fall into the correct places.

He still didn’t know its name, but he knew vaguely what he was doing. He was guarding something. There was a big, important test happening in a few hours. He had a friend named Josh or Jefferem or something, and yadda yadda Playstation. He didn’t know what that was, but he knew he liked it, and he knew he had plans after work to use it in some way with the Josherem or Jeffosh or whoever the fuck it was.

Most importantly, he knew the younger one’s name. The object he’d been obsessed with was apparently called “Gordon” and it was going to be at that fancy test. It was a test with the crystal he broke his tooth on. The buzzing rock. The weird thing.

Oh, that didn’t seem like a good idea.

He released the human and it crumbled, deteriorating into a pile of ash and following the sound of his voice as it scattered through the vents. He watched it go, his mind riddled with white noise and junk, a new and uncomfortable feeling welling up inside of him. It wasn’t guilt since guilt was for pussies, but maybe sadness?

Sadness? The fuck was sadness? 

It didn’t matter. “Gordon” was coming.

Getting out of the ventilation system as a human was harder than he expected. He was thicker and less limber and the drop was pretty far. He landed with a bone-crunching thunk and an explosion of pain that, thankfully, only lasted a few moments before things began to knit themselves back together. In the distance, he could hear voices growing nearer and louder, and in spite of the new and uncomfortable sensation, he rushed to where Benrey’s mind(was that his name now? Benrey?) had told him to stand.

Standing upright was weird, so he pressed his back against the wall to help his pitiful posture. He stared straight ahead, quickly noticing a fleshbag wearing a near identical uniform, who he apparently hadn’t noticed when he first took on his disguise. The human was pale, fists clenched, stunned into silence. He hoped it knew to keep its stupid mouth shut.

“Howdy!”

The familiar voice of “Gordon” chimed at the side of his head and he lurched forward instinctively, watching as the human he’d been stalking swept past, clad in a vivid orange exoskeleton. He’d never seen it before, and it was interesting and alien and made it all the more fascinating. The strange feeling of allurement came back, stronger and harder, and he wanted to say something. To follow him. To stay by his side until he figured out…

… Oh.

The new, human part of his mind immediately noticed something off as “Gordon” traipsed by and his heart skipped a beat. From an opening in the front of the exoskeleton, there was a waggling, loose bit of flesh that his rewired brain indicated was supposed to remain hidden. It was uncouth and forbidden and grossly inappropriate, a huge _faux pas_ that his human memories insisted was humiliating and scandalous. He wasn’t sure why he felt a wave of anxiety, but his newfound social awareness told him that it was the appropriate reaction.

That, and anger, though not all of that stemmed from thinking more like a fleshbag. After all the effort he’d put into this meeting, to have it begin on such a sour note was a slap to the goddamned face.

After all these weeks, after all this hard work, he’d finally met the object of his interest. _Finally_. And instead of getting a chance to figure out why this “Gordon” sparked such curiosity, the only thing he could think of was something he couldn’t fully understand. It echoed in his mind in the security guard’s voice, louder than the fucking alarms he’d set off while pressing buttons in the biological research wing the week before.

 _Yo, his dick out_.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [the one with my hlvrai sona](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24317824) by [arcadelightning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcadelightning/pseuds/arcadelightning)
  * [Meeting Death Again](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24578887) by [purplevoices](https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplevoices/pseuds/purplevoices)




End file.
